Day 3 ~ London

 The Imperial War Museum

 An example of a bomb used in WW II

 Tate sitting in an artillery seat

Lunch at Harvey Nichols - YOSushi!

Entering our show

Taylor approves of our seats!

Late night waffles

Our wishes for another day of good weather proved to be too greedy.  We filled our rainy day with a trip to the Imperial War Museum.  It is a museum dedicated to every war that Britain has fought in during the modern era.  The boys loved all of the examples of bombs, planes, ships, and weapons.  It also had a section filled with the history of the Holocaust.  What a moving experience, should be a good warm up to our visit to the concentration camp in Munich.  For lunch we made our way over to one of the many shopping districts.  We ogled our way through Harrods department store and had lunch at Harvey Nichols.  They had a sushi restaurant where the dishes came by on a conveyor belt and you choose what looked good.  Each color of plate was a different price, pretty genius I think.  The highlight of our day was the evening performance of Wicked.  Everyone loved it, but especially Taylor.  We were all humming the tunes when we got back to the hotel.  Bill then took us to his favorite late night haunt for ice cream and waffles. DELICIOUS!

Day 2 ~ London

 London Tower Bridge

 Tate practicing his sentry skills

 Peek of London Tower Bridge from London Tower

 London Tower

 Lucky Ducks who live in the Palace Garden

 Part of the changing of the Guard

White Palace

 Royal Albert Hall

Prince Albert Memorial

English Fish & Chips for lunch

Our day started bright and early...2 am for the kids and 5 am for Bill and I.  We spent the day with our guide Jeremy.  He drove us all around London and took us to some of the highlights.  One of the places we went was Westminster Abbey ( pictures were not permitted ).  We walked over the tombs of Charles Dickens and Charles Darwin, along with many others.  We saw the changing of the Royal Guard, ate authentic fish & chips, and saw Medieval weaponry and armor at the London Tower.  We also saw the crown jewels which include a 500 carat diamond in Queen Elizabeth's II scepter.  We were so grateful the weather cooperated, we have our fingers crossed for another beautiful day tomorrow!

Day 1 ~ London

WW II bomber and fly over

jets with colored trails

the closest we came to seeing the Queen 

our hotel 

all tucked in...

We made it!  The flights went smoothly and everyone was able to sleep.  After arriving we attempted to get a glimpse of the Queen, but our efforts were unsuccessful.  The rain kept our sight seeing to a minimum, just a soggy walk down Picadilly and dinner at an Italian restaurant.  The rule was none could go to bed until 8:00pm and that was really hard to do. We are hoping for better weather tomorrow.

Thanksgiving 2011

The $100 fan challenge. Tate's best Thanksgiving EVER!!!

Christopher's crazy pie eating face.

Very cute Dayley family.

Trace's dance moves

Hudson's dance moves...sorry Trace, Hudson is cuter :-)

just awkward...

how sweet ;-)

Beautiful girls

Christopher & Tate looking eerily similar....

Ingram family including Rocco

Pyramid of manly men.

awkward & uncomfortable family photo

Joey & Jess - cute newlyweds

Family Photos October 2011

A few of my favorites from this year's family photo shoot. Bill and I are absent because it was impossible for Bill to be available. I didn't mind a bit. I don't like taking pictures.

Christmas Miracle??? Not really - I'm just posting to my bog...

Sorry I am such an unreliable blogger. I guess I feel like I am too busy living life, to keep this up to date. So here is our year in review. Not many pictures, again I am terrible ;-)

Tate's 10th birthday! We alternate between family and friend birthday parties. This year was a family year, but Tate had friends over just to hang out.

Presents to open !!!

Tate's first day of 4th grade.

Taylor's first day of 8th grade.

Trace's first day of sophomore year.

Grandma & Grandpa were visiting Amanda for Easter, so we had Easter on our own. We invited Uncle Christopher to join us. The Easter Bunny even brought Christopher a basket with goodies!

We went to Florida for spring break. This is the view from the house we rented.

Taylor and Grandma watching the fishermen, unaware that they were being

eaten alive by no-see'ums. They were vicious!

Tate and Grandpa getting their rigs ready.

Bill turned 40 this year! He had 8 presents to open, each explaining a piece of his birthday surprise. The first one was a pack of Vegas playing cards. We went to Las Vegas for a weekend and he drove a Nascar on the Vegas Motor Speedway. Happy Birthday Baby!

Tate and his friend Jake were the Wright Brothers for the wax museum. They couldn't smile or talk at all. They were very dedicated to staying in character.

Trace and his friend Cole working on his Eagle Project. Trace chose to collect hazardous waste in our community and take it to be disposed of properly. He was a great leader and had a lot of support from his troop. He did the collection in April and his project was officially completed (including a ridiculous amount of paperwork) in October! Way to go Trace!

This was last year's Thanksgiving. It was supposed to be the snowstorm of 2010, so we decided to stay home instead of making the trek down to St. George. It was the first Thanksgiving we had as our own little family. We even ate in the official dining room and used the special china!

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